Airbnb has recorded another solid financial quarter, it shared Tuesday on its earnings call, while opening up about expansion plans, including eventual intent to relaunch Airbnb Experiences.
The short-term rental giant saw $2.75 billion in revenue, marking an 11% increase year over year. The company’s net income sat at $555 million, showing a 20% net income margin. It also clocked an adjusted EBITDA of $894 million, marking a 9% rise year over year, with a 33% margin, which was stable compared with the same period last year.
Additionally, Airbnb saw 125.1 million nights and experiences booked, showing 9% growth year over year.
“During Q2 we [continued] to make progress on our three strategic priorities, which, again, are making hosting mainstream, perfecting our core service and expanding beyond the core,” said Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky.
As part of those goals, Airbnb has focused on quality control, Chesky said, noting the company has removed 200,000 listings that didn’t meet guest expectations since April 2023, up from 100,000 removals in March.
Chesky also reiterated the company is expanding past its core purpose as a home rental platform. He pointed to opportunity areas such as events and holidays - noting that last month's Fourth of July weekend gave Airbnb its “single highest week of revenue ever in North America.” The company saw similar upward trends in Europe with the Olympics, where nights booked in Paris more than doubled compared with the second quarter last year. The Airbnb co-founder also pointed to more users booking in-app and a growing supply as points of confidence.
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Chesky noted a positive outlook for the third quarter too.
“Turning [to] Q3, we're looking forward to another record summer travel season,” said Chesky, noting he is encouraged by excitement around the Olympics and the “relative strength” of the business in Latin America and Asia Pacific - which Airbnb continues to see as its fastest growing regions.
But he cautioned about Airbnb seeing shorter booking lead times around the globe, among other trends. "We're watching these trends closely, along with the impact any macroeconomic pressures might be causing, and we're continuing to execute against our growth strategy by improving our service, expanding a less penetrated market and interesting new offerings.”
Chesky said he believes the company’s growth strategy should offset transitory macro trends and also pointed to new services and launches on track to debut this year and next.
“This fall, this October, we're [going to] be launching a new host service, which is really important,” said Chesky. “It's essentially a co-hosting marketplace.”
He elaborated, noting there are people who want to host but don’t have time, the marketplace should help to connect them. “That would unlock a lot more inventory.”
Looking beyond this year, Chesky pointed to a long-discussed feature that he expects to bring back.
“Then next year, we're going to begin to expand Airbnb truly beyond a core business,” said Chesky. “And we're going to relaunch Experiences.”
Airbnb removed thousands of Experience listings in May after it launched its Icons program.
“We've learned a lot of lessons from experiences,” said Chesky. “You know, they need to be more affordable. They need to be more unique to Airbnb. When you think you can only find Airbnb, they should be merchandising videos, not photos. They should be discoverable in the app, and we should market them. If we think we do those five things, we think we'll have a hit on our hands, and we're working on that.”
The second quarter earnings follow Airbnb’s strong first quarter performance, which came on the heels of the unveiling of its widely-discussed Icons program.
At the time, Chesky compared the company’s financial strategy to a solar system while speaking to analysts. “Right now, if you think of Airbnb as a solar system, the home is like the sun at the center of the solar system. I think in the future, the profile will be the center of the solar system of Airbnb, and the home will be one of many categories orbiting the profile.”